Conflicting Party Ordinance Talking Points

The Flagstaff City Council will be revisiting their recently passed party ordinance on April 12th at their 6:00 pm work session at City Hall. This may be our last chance to institute changes to the ordinance and if you have concerns I strongly encourage you to attend this work session and make your voice heard. If you cannot attend, please send council an email. You can email the entire Flagstaff City Council at council@flagstaffaz.gov

I will be speaking at this work session but I have also emailed council several times with additional concerns. Below is an email I sent today talking about the Flagstaff Police Department’s conflicting talking points.

“Mayor and Council,

As you know, the Flagstaff Police Department recently conducted a series of meetings with students and concerned residents to discuss Flagstaff’s recently passed party ordinance. I attended these meetings and while I found Flag PD to be open to listening to our concerns, I also found that they seem to be pushing a lot of conflicting talking points.

At our first meeting a Daily Sun reporter quizzed us about why we were opposed to the new ordinance since it takes away some criminal penalties and makes them civil. She said students should be thanking Flag PD for making their lives easier. I said the better question is how will this ordinance help Flag PD if it is all about making student’s lives easier. After all, Flag PD says they need this new ordinance to help break up parties. Flag PD responded that the reason it is better is because they can now go after property owners.

With this in mind, pay close attention to the Flagstaff Police Department’s presentation on April 12th. As of March 9th they told us that no property owners had been cited. Yet, they will be at council touting the success, so far, of this ordinance. They will even be showing you a video of them breaking up a party. If it is the same video they played for us, you will see a crowd quietly and respectfully dispersing. You will see no citations issued. You will see a small amount of litter on private property but something I suspect would be picked up the next morning. Simply put, you will hear Flag PD touting the success of this ordinance while showing proof that 3 officers can peacefully break up large parties without using the ordinance.

Of course, that video is not reflective of all parties in Flagstaff. As of March 9th, 95 civil and 22 criminal citations had been issued under the new party ordinance. What Flag PD could not tell us was how this measured up to the same time period in previous years. Would those violations have equated to 117 criminal citations? Or would there still have only been 22 criminal citations with no civil citations? We need to know because of the possibility that the vague language of this new ordinance is casting a wider net on the civil side.

I hope you will join me in looking for clarification and answers to these questions at the April 12th council work session.